Does anyone know how to make a bowl out of toy army men?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve seen bowls like this in various magazines, and I thought I would be able to make one for much less than $225. Does anyone have any idea how to do it? Would I just need to buy some plastic army men and stick them in a bowl in the oven? Would there be a specific type of army men I’d need to use?

If anyone has any ideas, I’d sure appreciate it. If I successfully make a bowl and anyone’s interested, I’ll try to post some pictures.

2

Pure WAG- I think you’d need two pyrex bowls, one nesting in the other with the army men in between for that squished flat effect, and you’d have to arrange them carefully so they’re connected, and monitor it carefully so it doesn’t get too liquidy.

3

I would try two nested glass bowls with the army men between them. I wouldn’t start with a really hot oven, it looks like the men are softened not melted. I would look up “mould release” on google to see if they suggest any product on the glass to prevent sticking.

I first thought of holding them in place with foil but that would get stuck in the plastic as it cooled.

I think if you just put the guys in one bowl they would fall to the bottom

4

You’d have to link them somehow, so that they are pre-fixed in position. You can use some type of glue for that purpose, or plastic ties. Just use an unobtrusive color, like transparent fishing line.

And you’d have to look up the melting point of the plastic, and keep the temperature near that level, but not quite. You want to bring out the plasticity of the plastic, rather than render the plastic into a runny liquid state.

5

Another WAG…rather than putting the bowl in the oven, use a heat gun. I’m thinking that, with a heat gun, you’d have more control over the melting.

6

You might also want to find out about the plastic you are going to use - some plastics produce fumes that are not good for breathing. Or they could linger forever in your oven.

7

Wear safety glasses.

8

Those soldiers, I have to point out, don’t look like the “Army Men” from the Toy story movie. They look more like the pretty flat toy soldiers you got from those ads at the back of 1960s comics (“100 Revolutionary War Soldiers! And they come packed in their own Foot Locker!”) There was a wonderful page on these (they had modern American Soldiers and ballerinas and other flat figures as well), but I can’t bring it up right now.

The point is that such flatter soldiers would be a lot easier to place between two “molding” bowls. They were smaller, too, and made of a different plastic. If they were polyethylene (which would be consistent with the low price) they’d be easier to heat and remold than the plastic “Toy Story”-type soldiers were made of.

9

I have no basis for this beyond a crazy guess, but it might work if you took used the nested bowls method but used a metal bowl for the top one, and poured hot (boiling maybe?) water into it rather than just popping the whole apparatus in the oven.

My justification being that this would apply more pressure to the soldiers (thus flattening them out more) while applying heat from the inside of the bowl so that the features on the outside would (potentially) be less deformed and more recognizable.

Also, be very careful not to actually melt the plastic. As SnakesCatLady said, plastic fumes are not a good thing. If possible, do this in a thoroughly ventilated area so that any fumes don’t collect.

10

I want one! If you figure it out, let me know!

11

Thank you everyone for the advice. Here’s what I tried for anyone who’s interested.

  1. I bought a bag of army men at Toys R Us. These were the only toy army men I found in town, so I just thought I would try making the bowl with them.
  2. I arranged the army men in the bowl so that they were covering the glass surface, and all of them touching some other soldiers.
  3. I put another glass bowl inside the army men to apply pressure.
  4. I put some foil on a cooking sheet and put some army men on the cooking sheet to see at what temperature the toys started to melt. At 250 degrees there didn’t seem to be any affect, but 300 seemed to be about the right temperature.
  5. I put the bowl in the oven and kept checking on it, and it seems like 45 minutes was the right so they started to melt together, but not melt too much. At lower times, they were melted, but wouldn’t necessarily stay together.
  6. At 45 minutes I took the bowls out, and let them cool for a while. After everything seemed cool enough, I very carefully peeled the inner glass bowl off, and then took the army men bowl out. A few men fell off, and there was one intersection that seemed like it could fall apart, so I put some epoxy glue on that intersection.

Overall, I think it came out pretty well. There could be some improvements- like I didn’t have two Pyrex bowls of the same size, so they didn’t nest ideally, but I might head back to Wal-Mart to get another Pyrex bowl.

So far the bowl has held together pretty well. The real challenge will be that I’m giving the bowl to a friend as a birthday present, and so I’m taking the bowl to her in Houston. So I need to find a box and hope it lasts the 90 minute drive.

I didn’t notice any smells or fumes as I was making the bowl. I had much worse fumes when I was making some record bowls, where I would have to hold my breath as I was opening the oven, and occasionally run to my balcony to get some fresh air. So far I haven’t ever used my oven for making food, but I hope I haven’t made it unusable for actually cooking food.

So, overall I think it was a success, though I’ll probably be making some more and see if I can improve it. The heat gun idea sounds good (and fun!) though I’ve never used one and wouldn’t know exactly where to get one or how to use one. If I try that I might invite someone over so that we can have a fun craft day and so there could be someone to call 911 just in case.

I took some pictures of the bowl, but I really need to get back to working on homework right now, so I’ll try to post the pictures in the next few days if anyone is interested.

Thanks again for the advice.

12

There’s also another method posted here near the bottom of the thread - it involves an outdoor grill, a baking sheet, some foil and two metal bowls. Doing it outside seems like a good idea!

13

Thanks for the link. The outdoor grill method does seem like a good idea. Unfortunately, I am in an apartment and do not have an outdoor grill. Maybe I can see if one of my friends with a house has a grill and if they’d be interested in experimenting with the bowls.

14

What were you thinking, Sam L?!?? You give us all this meticulous detail about the process and you don’t post a damn picture! We must see pictures!

15

The downside of the outdoor grill method is that darned cowboy puppet who keeps rescuing the army men before the bowl is done.